Matmos is an experimental

electronic music Electronic music broadly is a group of music genres that employ electronic musical instruments, circuitry-based music technology and software, or general-purpose electronics (such as personal computers) in its creation. It includes both music ...

duo formed in

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

and based in

Baltimore Baltimore is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland. With a population of 585,708 at the 2020 census and estimated at 568,271 in 2024, it is the 30th-most populous U.S. city. The Baltimore metropolitan area is the 20th-large ...

. M. C. (Martin) Schmidt and Drew Daniel are the core members, but they frequently include other artists on their records and in their performances notably including J Lesser. Apart from releasing twelve full-length studio albums and numerous collaborative works, Matmos is also well known for their collaboration with Icelandic singer and musician

Björk Björk Guðmundsdóttir ( , ; born 21 November 1965), known mononymously as Björk, is an Icelandic singer, songwriter, composer, record producer, and actress. Noted for her distinct voice, three-octave vocal range, and eccentric public per ...

, both on studio recordings and live tours. After being signed to Matador Records for nine years, Matmos signed with Thrill Jockey in 2012. The name ''Matmos'' refers to the seething lake of evil slime beneath the city Sogo in the 1968 film '' Barbarella''.

Notable work

In 1998, Matmos remixed the

single " Alarm Call". Then the duo worked with Björk on her albums '' Vespertine'' (2001) and '' Medúlla'' (2004), as well as the ''Vespertine'' and ''Greatest Hits'' tours. In November 2004, Matmos spent 97 hours in the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts as artists-in-residence'','' performing music with friends, musical guests and onlookers. The live album ''Work, Work, Work'', essentially a "best of" collection of the session, was released as a free download on their website. Matmos gained notoriety for their use of unconventional samples including "freshly cut hair" and "the amplified neural activity of crayfish" on their first album and "recorded the snips, clicks, snaps, and squelches of various surgical procedures, then nipped and tucked them into seven remarkably accessible, melodic pieces of experimental techno" for their album ''A Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure''. In 2011, Matmos participated in a programmed evening of events with the visual arts organisation Auto Italia South East. The event was produced in collaboration with record labe
Upset The Rhythm
and included contributions from experimental electronic musicians Jon Wiese and Birds of Delay. Matmos have since collaborated with a large number of visual artists and arts organisations, including Cafe Oto an
Metal
In 2015, Matmos appeared in '' Soundhunters,'' a documentary directed by Beryl Koltz and broadcast on the Franco-German channel arte as well as on many channels abroad. In September 2023, the duo announced their album '' Return to Archive'' would be released marking the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Smithsonian Folkways label, with a three-hour free concert at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C. in which they remixed field recordings from the label's catalogue in octophonic sound.

Hit Em

In 2024, Daniel tweeted about a new musical genre called "Hit Em" which he claims to have learned about during a

dream A dream is a succession of images, ideas, emotions, and sensation (psychology), sensations that usually occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. Humans spend about two hours dreaming per night, and each dream lasts around ...

while he was asleep; in the tweet he described the genre to be fixed at 212 BPM and

time signature A time signature (also known as meter signature, metre signature, and measure signature) is an indication in music notation that specifies how many note values of a particular type fit into each measure ( bar). The time signature indicates th ...

. The post went viral, with electronic music producers attempting to create examples of the fictional genre.

Personal lives

Schmidt and Daniel are a couple. Daniel received a Ph.D. in English from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

with a dissertation on the literary cult of melancholy directed by Janet Adelman. He is an associate professor in the English department at

Johns Hopkins University The Johns Hopkins University (often abbreviated as Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Founded in 1876 based on the European research institution model, J ...

. That had the band moving from San Francisco to Baltimore in August 2007. Daniel also has a personal dance music project, the Soft Pink Truth. He is a contributing writer to ''

Pitchfork A pitchfork or hay fork is an agricultural tool used to pitch loose material, such as hay, straw, manure, or leaves. It has a long handle and usually two to five thin tines designed to efficiently move such materials. The term is also applie ...

'', an online magazine, and he wrote the '' 33 1/3'' book about Throbbing Gristle's 1979 album '' 20 Jazz Funk Greats'' in addition to two books of literary criticism. Schmidt formerly worked as a teacher in the New Genres Department at the San Francisco Art Institute, and is a professor of music technology at Johns Hopkins University's Peabody Institute and the president of the High Zero Foundation, which organizes Baltimore's annual High Zero festival of improvised music. Both Schmidt and Daniel appeared in the Sagan music short ''Unseen Forces'' by Ryan Junell.

Discography

Albums

EPs

* '' Full On Night'' Split Disc with Rachel's (2000, Quarterstick) * '' California Rhinoplasty'' (2001 Feb 12, OLE-501) * ''Rat Relocation Program'' (2004) * ''For Alan Turing'' (2006) * ''The Ganzfeld EP'' (2012, on Thrill Jockey 315)

Limited edition

* ''Matmos Live with J Lesser'' (2002) * ''A Viable Alternative to Actual Sexual Contact'', as Vague Terrain Recordings (2002, Piehead Records) * "A Paradise of Dainty Devices: interludes, micromedia & sound edits" (limited edition of 100, for their "Wet Hot EuroAmerican Summer Tour", 2007) * ''Polychords'' : Promo Single released on Matador * '' I Want Snowden/Sheremetyevo Breakdown Blues'', split single with the Disco Yahtzee Empire (2013)

References

External links

*
Matmos page at Matador RecordsMatmos at Myspace
{{Authority control Electronic music groups from California Intelligent dance musicians American electronic music duos American male musical duos LGBTQ-themed musical groups American LGBTQ musicians Musical groups established in 1995 1995 establishments in California Thrill Jockey artists Matador Records artists Locust Music artists Electronic music groups from Maryland